Abstract:

Psychodrama is an experiential psychotherapy in which role reversal is one of the core techniques. Jacob Levy Moreno, the founder of psychodrama, believes that the self emerges from the role that we play. On the basis of Morenian role theory, rich clinical experience has been accumulated in contemporary psychodrama therapy, but it lacks an explanatory theory to comprehensively explain the beneficial effects of the working mechanism of psychodrama therapy. Predictive processing theory is a new paradigm for understanding the mind in recent years. It provides us with a possible framework for explaining self-knowledge. This study introduces predictive processing theory to explain interpersonal interaction relationship in the process of role reversal, based on the experience of role reversal. By answering how the predictive mind functions in the process of constructing the self, this study points out that role reversal is a kind of self-construction process.

There are three psychodrama interpretation models from the perspectives of signal, model and interaction. This study discusses not only the effect of a single role reversal on the predictive mind but also the effect of multiple role exchanges on the model update. Three explanatory models answer the question on how the model changes during a psychodrama work, and also attempt to clarify the interactive construction process of the model throughout the whole psychodrama process. The process is as follows.

First, the step of switching forces the protagonist to take the perspectives of the other person, and brings about the change of the signal type. The protagonist’s predicted signals change into the auxiliary’s sensory signals, so that individuals can recognize their own existence as an object. Then, the auxiliary’s predicted signals change into the protagonist’s sensory signals, which facilitates the model update of the protagonist. In the consultation, the change of signal type is divided into three steps. The process of signal transition presents implicit conflicting patterns that help individuals find strategies that minimize prediction errors.

Second, the model that the protagonist owns has been updated when roles reverse with one another, at the same time, the protagonist has been required to activate two internal representations simultaneously, one of the “self”and one of the“other”. The accuracy trade-off towards two models determines how much individuals rely on evidence in the environment or on their own prior experience. Role reversal is the process of an interpersonal precision trade-off. Individuals can collect more information on the protagonist and the opposite, or other related roles in their own system, and make self-determined choices after understanding the accuracy of each representation.

Third, the model is constructed and generated in the interaction between the individual self and the other. The self-model is hierarchical. Every level of hierarchical model can be described by a causal Bayesian network. On this basis, the Bayesian network of the protagonist and the auxiliary is constructed interactively. Relationships between three variables (hypothesis variables, prediction variables and intermediate variables) can be found. Within the framework of psychodrama, intermediate variables conclude social systems, cultural contexts, and interactions between different norms. Multiple role reversals have additive effects on model updates. Combined with the psychodrama spiral proposed by Goldman and Momson (1984), the model is also dynamically constructed. The psychological drama spiral based on predictive processing theory is dynamic.

The conclusion turns out that explaining the structural features of role reversal according to predictive processing theory can promote this technology so as to play a better role in clinical treatment. In the future, we will conduct empirical research on the mechanism of role reversal to verify the above models.

Key words: psychodrama, role reversal, role construction, self, predictive processing